Proud Boys

About the proud boys

The Proud Boys are a neo-fascist violent extremist organization with semi-autonomous chapters in America, Canada, Oceania and Europe. Their current organizational structure is built on a strategy common among extremist groups in the United States called “leaderless resistance”; it advocates for small groups to act autonomously while also being “united by a common mission”. In their own words, they claim that each group is autonomous, but all follow a common set of “core tenants”. In addition to their stated ideology, they have co-opted several high-profile issues over the course of their existence: Pro-Trump, anti-Antifa, anti-abortion, anti-indigenous, anti-mask, anti-“grooming”, etc.

For many individuals, the Proud Boys have served as a “gateway” to more violent extremist ideological movements and are often viewed as “a ‘stepping stone’ group to more extremist alt-right [groups].”

In order to better understand the group, and it’s impact in the US we have provided the following visualizations. The visualizations are also key to our report for the January 6th Select Committee on the group, and it’s role in American politics before, during and after the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th 2021.

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Map illustrating the frequency of incidents and events instigated or participated in by the Proud Boys in the US by State and City. The darkness of each state’s shade indicates the frequency of incidents, the size of the circles indicates the number of incidents per city, and the color of the circles indicates separate cities. The map demonstrates significant activity in the Pacific Northwest Region, Texas, and Florida, in addition to Portland and Washington DC. Based on the Proud Boys subset of the KII HateMap data (http://www.hatemap.io/)

Overview illustrating by proportionality how frequently other groups have co-attended events along with the Proud Boys - the frequency of co-attendance and collaboration with overt white supremacist organizations is indicative of the allegiances of the group - see the previous page for colour-coded legend corresponding to identified groups.

Frequency
of Events

Graph showing the frequency of Proud Boys’ events in the Hatemap dataset by week. Between the inception of the group in 2016 and June 2022 only one week saw zero events. The frequency of events peaked in the week of January 6th, and in the time-period surrounding the 2020 US Presidential Election. Activity is maintained to date.

The Proud Boys Network Visualization